


just say the word and i’ll part the sea

by maddielle



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Established Relationship, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Reunions, Slice of Life, Soft Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Soft Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddielle/pseuds/maddielle
Summary: Still moments amid a fast-paced world.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 23
Kudos: 135





	just say the word and i’ll part the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sit Next To Me – Foster the People

_Toronto, 1998_

When Andy ordered the team to scatter, Joe didn’t argue. She’s always had intuition about this, so he picked up his bag and bought a plane ticket at random and disappeared on his own. After that, it’s well over a year before he gets a postcard in the mail of the CN Tower, battered and a bit damp with no message written. He’s been in Oregon, enjoying the mountains and, recently, the cold solitude of December, but his composure melts into longing quickly. He’s been careful not to indulge in missing his family. Now, he wants.

He lands in Toronto and is the second to arrive at the apartment in the west end of the city. Nicky opens the door for him, smiles so gently, and tugs Joe back into him. Their foreheads knock together, and Nicky takes Joe’s face in his hands and presses a long kiss to the wind-chaffed apple of his cheek.

“Hi, love,” he murmurs, and Joe sighs.

They share tea and dinner, tales of their solo travels, and eventually settle in the living room. There, Joe sits with his back to the arm of the small loveseat. Nicky draws one knee up and faces him.

“I would never choose to be apart,” Joe says, reaching for Nicky's hands and tangling their fingers on his thigh. “But reuniting with you feels so sweet every time.”

Nicky huffs a small laugh. Joe can’t believe he went a year without hearing it. “Will you kiss me?” he asks. Nicky blinks slowly and nods.

It’s hard to find any more firsts to experience together after so many centuries; Joe figures that this is as close as they can get. Having Nicky slowly lean into his space feels at once foreign and familiar, and Joe catalogues each sensation anew as Nicky’s hands tighten on his and noses brush. Finally, a single kiss. They pause there, breathe in and out together.

“It is sweet,” Nicky says, after, lips brushing Joe’s as he forms his words. “But I admit I have been counting the days.”

“We’re here, now,” Joe assures him.

Nicky hums and leans in again.

_Nice, 2003_

It’s such a hot summer. Joe heard someone say it might be the hottest on record. _Climate change_ , he thinks. _That’s what they’re calling it._

Sticky heat puts Nicky in a very specific mood, especially in the down time between jobs. He twitches like a cat, talks less, and seems to buzz with frustrated energy. There’s only so much cooking and reading and exercising he can distract himself with. Eventually, he comes to Joe.

When he does, a week into the heatwave, Joe is outside, sketching his own foot idly in the shade of the villa next to theirs.

“Hello, love,” he says, tipping his head back. He got snapped at earlier that morning, so he’s been staying out of Nicky’s way on purpose. He wasn’t expecting to be approached.

“This weather is driving me crazy,” Nicky mutters.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry, I just-” He stops himself. Rubs his face with his hands.

“What do you need?” Joe asks, closing his sketchbook slowly. He has an idea, but he wants Nicky to use his words. He ends up being right when Nicky mumbles a quick, “Joe. Please,” and takes Joe’s hand to tug him indoors.

Joe tells Nicky to shower. In their room, he yanks all the blankets off the bed, leaving just the fitted sheet, and turns on the overhead fan to push a breeze through the space. He fetches a glass of water with ice and, when Nicky emerges fresh from the bathroom, has him down the entire thing. Joe then leads him to the bed and pushes him backwards to sprawl naked across the mattress.

The combination of the cool water wetting this throat and the moving air against his damp skin has Nicky groaning softly in relief.

“For someone born on the Mediterranean,” Joes starts fondly, “you endure this incredibly poorly.”

As he kneels on the bed between Nicky’s feet, careful not to touch skin to feverish skin, Nicky grunts. “I don’t remember Italy ever feeling like this.”

“More like willingly forgot.” Leaning on one hand, Joe has started to trail light fingers up Nicky’s shin. He doesn’t linger, doesn’t add to Nicky’s discomfort. Just wants to feel him.

“I want you on me, all around me,” Nicky whispers, frustration lacing his tone. “It’s just too damn _hot.”_

Joe hushes him. He guides one of Nicky’s thighs up and to the side. “Relax for me, love,” he murmurs. Patiently, he waits until Nicky closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and leans down to mouth at the base of Nicky’s soft cock where it lies against his hip. Nicky’s breath leaves him again in a long sigh as he settles in to accept Joe’s worship.

_Copenhagen, 2008_

Nicky feels wet to his core under the constant drizzle. He has to blink droplets from his eyes as he hurries along the sidewalk, Joe in tow. His shoulders clench every time a car passes close by, and his temple throbs distantly. The wound is healed, but he keeps his hood up to conceal the crusted blood along his jaw.

Eventually, there’s a lonely bus shelter under a drooping tree. They duck underneath. Joe immediately slumps back against the safety glass and sits heavily on the bench below.

“We weren’t followed,” Nicky mutters, peering back out the way they came. “They might’ve gone after Andy instead.” He pats his pockets, slides out his phone. It’s newer than any he’s had before. His damp fingers slip uselessly against the touchscreen, and he’s suddenly furious about it. He hisses, _"Piece of shit phone.”_

He’s not actually mad about the phone. That morning, he’d had quite a good time scrolling through news articles while Joe slept next to him. It’s just that they’d badly miscalculated the type of backup their mark had arrived with. Rather than let their secret out, Joe had been forced to play the role of hapless hostage, kicked in the gut on the ground until he’d coughed blood, saved from further assault only when Booker had finally found the chance to create an explosive diversion.

In the present, Nicky’s chest seizes at the stark memory. He forgets about the phone and whirls around, goes down hard on one knee in front of Joe.

Joe is hunched against the chill, elbows resting on his knees, head hanging. Nicky crowds him and puts his hands, his too-cold hands, to the sides of Joe’s face. Lifts his head slightly. “Joe,” he says. “Love. Are you alright?”

Joe is usually so quick to reassure, to blink away the hurt and warm Nicky from the inside out just by meeting his eye. Now, as drops of rain roll down his shoulders and hang at the ends of limp curls, he squeezes his eyes shut. His hands tremble between his knees.

“Joe.” Nicky’s voice strains. “Are you- Did you heal? Are you still hurt?” Fearful, he reaches inside of Joe’s windbreaker to grasp at his stomach.

“I’m fine,” Joe rasps finally, taking Nicky’s wrist. He clears his throat. “I’m fine. Nicky, please.”

Having not found any fresh blood, Nicky relents and withdraws. He tips his head back to find Joe’s gaze, but it doesn’t soothe him any. Joe’s eyes are pinched at the corners, and his mouth is slack, and Nicky has a horrid moment of awareness of their two bodies underneath the bus shelter. Alone in the dark, soaked, no comfort to be found from the concrete under Nicky’s knee or the steel bench under Joe’s thighs or the anonymous cars passing by in a steady rhythm.

There’s nowhere to go, no cash for a bus or taxi, nothing to do until Andy or Booker finds them, so Nicky grabs both of Joe’s hands in his and grips them tightly.

“I’m tired, Nico,” Joe says, words falling from his mouth.

Nicky’s heart aches, and he squeezes his hands even tighter, as if he could push away the misery of this night by sheer willpower alone.

_Reykjavik, 2013_

In July, eleven at night sees the sky above the city streaked red and blue as the sun wavers at the horizon. Joe has been careful throughout the job to keep a strict sleep schedule, but their flight back to mainland Europe is late the next day, and he feels drawn to the strangeness of nighttime daylight.

Nicky and the others turned in over an hour ago; Joe’s been by himself at the kitchen table of their temporary lodgings and watching dusk fall outside with wandering thoughts. After a while, creaking floorboards draw him gently back to the present, and Nicky greets him from behind by bending, circling Joe with his arms, and digging his nose into Joe’s shoulder.

“I thought you’d be fast asleep,” Joe says, scratching gentle fingers through Nicky’s hair.

“I was. I woke up.”

“Bad dream?”

“No.” Nicky tightens his arms. “I was thirsty, and then I missed you.” Straightening, he moves to the side and takes the chair next to Joe. He’s wearing running shorts and an ancient crewneck, socks drooping around his bony ankles. “All okay?”

“All okay,” Joe assures him, inclining his head towards the front window. “Watching the sun.”

Nicky nods and follows his gaze. Then, he looks back to Joe.

“Want to go for a walk?” he asks.

Joe beams. “I would love to go for a walk.”

Ten minutes later finds them hand in hand, sleep clothes exchanged for random pants and light jackets, strolling down a quiet residential street. The sky has deepened to violet and blue, and there’s just enough of a breeze off the ocean to be comfortably cool.

“Is there anywhere in particular you want to go?” Joe asks Nicky, swinging their hands between them just a little.

“Not really.” Nicky tilts his head back to glance upwards, perhaps looking to catch some stars. They’re in between streetlamps, shaded from view, and the moment is cozy enough for Joe to reel him in and kiss him indulgently. Nicky’s eyes are at half-mast when they finish, before brightening suddenly.

“Oh!” he says. “I have an idea. Come.”

He turns a corner, leads Joe down one street, and turns another corner, continuing until the road opens to a wide, flat space. In the center, beyond empty parking lots, the concrete church of Reykjavik. _Hallgrímskirkja,_ Joe’s mind supplies. He’s seen it from a distance a few times during their stay.

They cross the street and walk across the grounds to the vast courtyard before the towering structure. It’s a great, black monolith against the inky sky, the clock near the top standing out. Not watching his own feet, Joe stops walking when Nicky does, realizing that he’s brought them to stand directly across from the centre of the main spire.

Then, without their footsteps echoing, eerie silence falls.

“We can come back tomorrow and look inside,” Nicky eventually says, voice reverent.

“I’d like that,” Joe replies. “It is beautiful like this, though.” He slips his arm behind Nicky’s lower back and tugs him close, happy to stand with him against the cool evening as they take in the stark grandeur of the church.

“You know,” Nicky murmurs, later, “it would be fun to be married here.”

Joe chuckles. “If you can convince Andy to sit through another ceremony.”

“It’s been a while,” Nicky says casually with a shrug. “I would like to marry you again.”

Joe can’t help but nudge his nose along Nicky’s cheek until he turns to meet Joe’s mouth.

“When we get to Berlin,” Joe promises, after kissing his husband thoroughly, “I’ll make an honest man out of you. Yet again.”

“Should we plan a honeymoon?” Nicky wonders.

“We could. But I certainly don’t need an excuse to not let you out of my bed for a week or two.”

Nicky laughs, and the sounds rings out, short and happy until lost to the vastness of the world around.

_Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, 2018_

If Nicky closes his eyes, he might almost believe he’s sitting in an armchair on solid ground. That’s how smooth and stable the airliners are these days, though perhaps he only notices because he’s been alive long enough to experience the alternatives.

Five hours into the flight, and he can’t settle. He isn’t nervous, not about flying, not anymore. He just can’t block out the buzz of the other passengers, even though it’s not a full flight. Joe’s just woken from an enviable nap and wandered for the bathroom, and Nicky can’t keep his leg from bouncing.

Joe notices when he returns, of course, sliding back into his seat and covering the span of Nicky’s thigh with his palm.

“You’ll shake the plane out of the sky,” he says, eyes sparkling with quiet humour.

Nicky huffs and admits, “I can't sleep. I don't know why.”

Silent for a moment, Joe watches him carefully, which sets Nicky a little on edge. He knows he doesn’t look his best. He certainly doesn’t feel his best, after a week of spotty sleep and travel in clothes that need a proper wash and an unfortunate amount of instant coffee. He needs a good reset, that’s all. Something to remedy the bags under his eyes that have been looking a little darker lately.

None of this, however, stops Joe from reaching to stroke the back of his hand down Nicky’s cheek and shaking his head slightly and saying, just for the two of them, “You are so beautiful to me, Nico.”

Nicky kisses his hand, just because it’s within reach, and, when Joe lifts a welcoming arm, settles against him and nestles into the curve of his shoulder.

Sleep manages to find him not long after that.

**Author's Note:**

> this is mostly a bunch of little ideas and feelings i've had recently


End file.
